NEWS

Real Estate has confirmed details for their upcoming fourth LP – In Mind – out March 17th via Domino. Recorded in Los Angeles with Grammy-winning producer Cole M.G.N. (Beck, Snoop Dogg, Julia Holter), album opener ‘Darling’ is available now along with accompanying music video, directed by Weird Days.

Over 11 songs, In Mind pushes the band in new directions, while still retaining the warmth and soft-focus narratives that one has come to expect from Real Estate —pastoral guitars, elegantly deployed arrangements, a mindful melancholy. In Mind offers the sound of a mature band not only at the height of its power, but in a period of change. Since their last record – 2014’s Atlas – primary songwriter Martin Courtney became a father of two and moved to upstate New York, while bassist Alex Bleeker relocated to California. In addition, following the departure of co-founding member and lead guitarist Matt Mondanile in 2015, Courtney, Bleeker, drummer Jackson Pollis and keyboardist Matt Kallman welcomed longtime friend and New Jersey native Julian Lynch into the band as a full-time guitarist.

Atlas was an undisputed breakout for the band. Apart from being one of the most lauded records of that year, it earned them performances on Letterman and Conan, their third consecutive Pitchfork Best New Music, and saw them sell out London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire – their biggest UK headline date so far.

In addition to a spot at Coachella this Spring, Real Estate will tour extensively behind In Mind - more info coming soon.

In Mind will be available on CD, LP and digitally. An exclusive limited edition deluxe LP featuring heavyweight colored vinyl, gold foil imprinted packaging, and a slipmat, is available to pre-order from Domino Mart. iTunes pre-orders will come with an instant download of ‘Darling’.

Electric Lines, the new album from producer Joe Goddard, is all about connections. The title refers to the colourful cables that link the modules in his Eurorack synthesizer and to the invisible wires that run between all the different kinds of electronic music that he loves. An apt title for a record which brilliantly unites the strands of his prolific career: member of Hot Chip and the 2 Bears, songwriter, producer, DJ, Grammy award nominated remixer and co-founder of the Greco-Roman label.

Like Four Tet, Caribou and Jamie xx, Joe combines a thirst for experimentation, an instinctive understanding of the dancefloor and a love of left-of-centre pop music. Electric Lines confirms his place in the front rank of British producers.

Today Goddard also drops the video for new single ‘Music Is The Answer’, the second track to be heard from the forthcoming album.

Following hot on the heels of ‘Lose Your Love’, ‘Music Is The Answer’ is an infectious left-of-centre pop track featuring London singer-songwriter Jess Mills, also known as Slo (previous collaborations include Photek, Distance and Breakage).

Directed by Shynola creative collective (Radiohead ‘Pyramid Song’, Beck ‘E-Pro’, Blur ‘Good Song’, Queens of The Stone Age ‘Go With The Flow’), the video epitomises the track’s optimistic message and much needed modern day mantra. Director Richard Kenworthy says: “The message of this track really resonated with us coming off the back of what for most people was a dispiriting year. We'd recently been reading about the AWOL Hitomi satellite, and also the incredible Pinchas Gutter hologram and that lead to imagine a story about a satellite lost in the vastness of space, broadcasting a recorded message of hope.”

Elsewhere on the album, Hot Chip bandmate Alexis Taylor features on the title track ‘Electric Lines’, while Michigan based singer Daniel Wilson makes an appearance on disco-sampling deep house track ‘Home’. Jess Mills graces the album’s two most irresistible pop songs, ‘Ordinary Madness’ and ‘Music Is the Answer’. Joe himself sings on a few tracks including the deeply personal ‘So Long’, a tender reflection on parenthood and mortality. Electric Lines treasure chest of styles also includes lustrous electronic soul (‘Lose Your Love’), rippling UK garage (‘Truth Is Light’) and shamanic psychedelic techno (‘Children’). The result is an album set to draw the map of 2017’s musical landscape and cement Joe Goddard as one of the UK’s most credible and well respected producers.

Electric Lines will be available on Deluxe Edition Vinyl, featuring a signed double LP on heavyweight vinyl with a wide spined sleeve, exclusive bonus 12” featuring 3 tracks from the Electric Lines’ album sessions, download card with album + 12” tracks. A UK specific edition will also include entry to the Electric Lines album launch show at London’s Heaven on Thursday 4th May 2017. The CD will feature an initial card pack pressing with a 6 page artwork booklet. You can purchase the album digitally HERE and via Amazon HERE. Vinyl and CD both feature completely unique, separate artwork.

Electric Lines tracklisting:

1 Ordinary Madness

2 Lose Your Love

3 Home

4 Lasers

5 Human Heart

6 Children

7 Truth Is Light

8 Nothing Moves

9 Electric Lines

10 Music Is The Answer

‘Electric Lines’ will be released April 21, 2017 on Greco-Roman/ Domino

The new Dirty Projectors song ‘Up In Hudson’ is an elegy — to the Obama years, to a generation of indie rock, and to a relationship. Over the course of nine verses and almost eight minutes, the lyrics situate David Longstreth & his band in the vivid textures of the recent past like a millennial Blood On The Tracks. It is a piece of epic storytelling unlike anything else in Dirty Projectors’ discography.

To arrive where we began and know the place for the first time: ‘Up In Hudson’ is an origin story for a new chapter of Dirty Projectors.

And with it, Dirty Projectors announce their long-awaited 7th LP.

The new album does everything we want and expect from Dirty Projectors — but in a way we never could have imagined or anticipated. In a career of surprising conceptual gambits, unexpected stylistic evolutions, and continually changing lineups — this is, as DJ Khaled says, “ANOTHER ONE”!

Dirty Projectors will be out February 24, 2017 on Domino.

Tracklisting:

01. Keep Your Name

02. Death Spiral

03. Up In Hudson

04. Work Together

05. Little Bubble

06. Winner Take Nothing

07. Ascent Through Clouds

08. Cool Your Heart

09. I See You

The deluxe edition LP will be available exclusively through the Domino Mart. The deluxe features the album on 150g clear with black smoke double LP, housed in a wide spine jacket with a 16-page 11x11 libretto, and an etched D side. The first pressing of the CD features an O-card sleeve with a 16-page libretto.

Domino are proud to announce Solide Mirage, the fourth studio album from Frànçois & The Atlas Mountains. An album of strength, beauty, ups and downs, Solide Mirage is the group’s most outspoken and deep-rooted work to date, and is set for release on March 3rd 2017.

Alongside the announcement of Solide Mirage, Frànçois & The Atlas Mountains have shared the album’s first single, ‘Grand Dereglement’, plus a video directed by Jack Barraclough and Frànçois himself. The video is a collaboration between Frànçois and Palestinian Dabké dancer Mohamed Okal, who fled with his family from the conflicts in Gaza, where he used to work as an ambulance driver. The two met in a volunteer refugee space in Brussels where Okal taught Dabké. On the video Frànçois says: “The lyrics of the song are about the great changes in the world that move populations, and force the weaker to adapt to an intense and strenuous lifestyle. Filming Dabké dancing inside one the most emblematic buildings of the Capital of Europe (Palais de Justice) is a way of showing the positive side of civilisation shifts.”

In the time since 2014’s Piano Ombre, Frànçois Marry rediscovered his adolescent passion for the power of grunge. This energy he “lost on the way”, in his own words, resurfaced on two occasions. A collaboration with Hedi Slimane, who allowed him to immerse himself in the punk and grunge scene of L.A. - with bands like Wand and Sunflower Bean in particular - revived his passion for this electricity. Secondly, and especially, as the band performed live dates in the Middle East, they found themselves playing to a youth still feverish after its Arab Spring. “We played in Istanbul, Lebanon, Alexandria and Cairo in 2015”, explains Frànçois. “We discovered a youth eager for music, in particular the Egyptian youth, who had made the revolution two years earlier.”

As a man and as an artist, it felt necessary to have that grunge-ful spite, that healthy anger, to survive the horrors of 2015 and the chaos of the world, referred to in “Grand Dérèglement”, the introduction of Solide Mirage. Attacks, wars, the migrant crisis, generalised fear, the pre-apocalyptic atmosphere: a dark year for all and one which incited profound questions in Frànçois Marry. “We questioned ourselves a lot. It’s delicate to speak about politics in songs, but inevitable when you write in moments like these. I have a natural attraction to abstract poetry but I realised that it had become a head-in-the-sand technique. I do not understand why musicians do not ask themselves more questions about the responsibility of their words. And considering the realities of life in the year 2015, I had to think about what we wanted to say”

Solide Mirage - like an imperceptible dream, a fantasy where reality shifts as one approaches it – is a perfect definition for this protean, changeable-yet-direct album which reveals new facets and new territories in every listen. Sometimes soft (on 1982, Apocalypse à Ipsos, Pepétuel été, 100.000.000), sometimes tough (Bête Morcelée and its rush of pure grunge, Grand Dérèglement and the roughness and splinters of Jamais Deux Pareils), sometimes crazy (the digitized trance ofÂpres Après), but always highly political, whether direct or reading between the lines.

The album was recorded in Jet Studios in Brussels and produced by Ash Workman, who also worked on Piano Ombre and who has worked with Metronomy and Christine & The Queens, with strings performed by Owen Pallett.

To celebrate the release of Solide Mirage, Frànçois will be playing a string of live dates across the UK at the end of March 2017.

It’s been eight years since Scott Kannberg, aka Spiral Stairs (founding member of Pavement and Preston School of Industry), released any new music. He knows that. The years just have a habit of slipping away sometimes.

You can’t hurry genius – not even the genial, unforced and unpretentious genius that has long been Scott’s forte. Today, Spiral Stairs announces news of his second album Doris and The Daggers – to be released on March 24ththrough Domino - and shares the first track from it, the album opener ‘Dance (Cry Wolf)’. Its Roxy Music meets Wire slink and stompable groove is a “positive, dance-away-the-pain thing” says Scott whilst the video features Jason Lytle from Grandaddy.

Doris and The Daggers is worth the wait, it showcases the most personal and emotional music Kannberg has ever written, reflecting the life changes that occurred over those eight years. During that stretch, Scott weathered the loss of friends, treasured the joys of fatherhood, lived life as an Australian and even ate haggis meat – experiences that inform these warm, sweetly melodic and soundly honest songs.

The first Spiral Stairs record The Real Feel came in 2009, just as Pavement were announcing a hugely successful burst of reunion shows. After that, Scott and his wife moved to Brisbane, Australia, started a family and life simply got in the way.

Having moved back to Los Angeles, the original concept for the album was to go to Seattle’s Orbit Studios and “record the whole thing in a week, like the old days.” Then, a month before the trip, Scott awoke to heart-breaking news: Darius Minwalla, who had drummed with Preston School of Industry and on The Real Feel, and was scheduled to play on the mooted Seattle sessions, died suddenly in his sleep.

Scott was deep-sixed by the news, and it would be another three months before he was ready to return to the studio. By that time, the album had changed – the songs had grown in the interim, become longer, more emotional. Following Darius’ death, Scott went to spend time with his friend, singer-songwriter Kelley Stoltz, up in San Francisco, where they bounced ideas off each other. “His influence made me turn the record in an entirely different direction.”

Instead of a week-long blitz, Doris and The Daggers was recorded over a more civilised, considered batch of short sessions at Exactamundo studios in Eagle Rock, California. Long-time low-end foil Matt Harris returned on bass duties, while the drum-stool was adopted by Broken Social Scene’sJustin Peroff. The trio cut 30 songs in all, while a number of Scott’s close musical friends stepped in to make some key contributions. Peroff’s Broken Social Scene cohort Kevin Drew sang on ‘Emoshuns’, Kelley Stoltz lent guitar to the summery chime of ‘AWM’, and The National’s Matt Berninger lends vocals to the bittersweet, zephyr-light ‘Exiled Tonight’.

“I guess I’ve been writing songs for a while now,” reflects Kannberg on his second album. “I like hearing echoes of things I love in the music that I make. Writing music doesn’t come easy to me – it’s hard to write a song that’s good. But our memories slowly escape us as we get older, and in songs you kind of relive those moments, the things that matter.” And that’s part of the key to Doris and The Daggers’ charm, along with the lyrical wit and Scott’s unerring knack for tuneage as embraceably familiar as a beloved sweater; these songs are full of life, stories engagingly told, and a sense of affection for everything that happens within them. You’ll keep returning to them again and again, and hope that Scott doesn’t wait so long to cut his next batch.

Tracklisting:

Dance (Cry Wolf)

Emoshuns

Dundee Man

AWM

No Comparison

The Unconditional

Trams (Stole My Love)

Exiled Tonight

Angel Eyes

Doris and The Daggers

Doris and The Daggers is available to pre-order now on deluxe vinyl with bonus tracks, standard vinyl, CD and digital download.

Domino is proud to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the release of Buzzcocks’ groundbreaking ‘Spiral Scratch’ EP with its reissue on the 27th of January 2017. ‘Time’s Up’, the 1976 demos recorded with founder & singer Howard Devoto and originally released as a bootleg, will be reissued on the 10th of March, alongside the Buzzcocks (mk.1) Box , containing vinyl and CD of both ‘Spiral Scratch’ and ‘Times Up’ alongside rare reprinted ephemera of the time. Watch ‘Breakdown’, filmed at Manchester’s Lesser Free Trade Hall shows in 1976 HERE.

‘It’s the Buzz, Cock’.

Howard Devoto read this headline from a January 1976 Time Out review of ‘Rock Follies’, the 1970s TV musical drama following the ups and downs of the fictional female rock group, ‘Little Ladies’.

Adapting and appropriating it as the name for his new band that he had just formed with Pete Shelley having realised what a Sex Pistol was before anyone else.

Buzzcocks formed having witnessed firsthand the white-heat of the early Sex Pistols. Howard and Pete went about organising the now infamous 1976 Lesser Free Trade Hall gigs that brought punk to the provinces and galvanized the new Manchester music revolution. The plan was to simply play support to the Pistols and then see what happened next…

Featuring the original line-up of Howard Devoto (vocals & songwriter), Pete Shelley (guitar & songwriter), Steve Diggle (bass guitar) and John Maher (drums), ‘Time’s Up’ was recorded at Revolution Studios, Bramhall Lane Stockport on the 18th of October 1976. The session, recording Buzzcocks’ live set at the time, cost £45 and was engineered by Andy MacPherson.

In December of the same year, the band recorded the four track ‘Spiral Scratch’ EP with a minimum of fuss in ‘downtime’ at Indigo Studios, with Martin Hannett (then going under the pseudonym of Martin Zero) producing. The band inexplicably took it upon themselves to release the EP themselves, somehow finding the monies necessary to press up 1000 copied on 7” vinyl, on their own New Hormones label. The EP sold for £1 a copy. Within days of the initial release, with typical punk chaos and sweet disregard for any cohesive business strategy, Howard Devoto revealed that he was quitting the band. The ‘Spiral Scratch’ EP quickly sold out its initial 1000 pressing, went on to sell 16,000 copies over the next six months and is now recognised as one of, if not the, most important records of the punk explosion – the first self-released record of its time, with the band responsible for everything, from sleeve design to distribution.

‘Spiral Scratch’ is testament to the power of punk’s possibilities and is an object lesson in how to debunk and demystify any hurdles presented by the establishment. The impact of this incredible seven inches of vinyl that kick-started the whole D.I.Y. culturegoes on, and on, and on, and on, and on…

‘Spiral Scratch’ will be available on 7” vinyl and digitally + a limited edition 7” with an insert including the original press release via Dom Mart. Stream ‘Spiral Scratch’ HERE

Buzzcocks (mk.1) Box contains 7” vinyl and CD of ‘Spiral Scratch’, LP vinyl and CD of ‘Time’s Up’ and audio & video download codes, plus reprinted ephemera of the time, including assorted 10” x 8” photographs, 1976 gig flyers and posters, pin badges, the ‘Spiral Scratch’ story and a new re-imagined edition of Manchester fanzine, ‘Shy Talk’ with original contributions from those who were there at the time. You can pre-order the box set HERE.

03/01/17

Double Six Rights Management is recruiting for a Repertoire Assistant.

Double Six Rights Management

Double Six Rights is Domino Music Group’s agency dedicated to the worldwide collection of Neighbouring Rights income for a rapidly-expanding roster of performers and record labels. We’ve significantly increased collections for this client base since our inception in 2011 and are now looking to add to our close-knit team.

The Role

The Repertoire Assistant will report to the Co-ordinators for Label and Performer Repertoire, assisting in the day-to-day operation of the business with a particular focus on our clients’ metadata. Duties will include:

Candidates should possess a keen eye for detail, above average numeracy and be comfortable working with large volumes of data. Some familiarity with database systems or royalty/accounting software would also be an asset. Experience with Excel is essential.

How to apply

To apply, please email a CV and covering letter stating how you meet the requirements to vacancy@doublesixrights.com before Friday 20th January, 2017.

16/12/16

Domino is proud to launch Documents, an irregular new series of live studio recordings designed to capture the ever-evolving arrangements of our artists and their bands in high fidelity. Taking its inspiration from classic BBC sessions, each Documents release will be recorded in no more than a day or two at a world class studio in London. Or at least that’s the plan.

The first official Documents release is In The Same Room by Julia Holter, although Domino count Villagers’ Where Have You Been All My Life? as the honorary inaugural Document in all but name.

In The Same Room – to be released March 31st 2017 – is named after a song from Holter’s 2012 album Ekstasis, andthis new career-spanning collection is the fruit of two days recording by Julia and her tremendous band (Corey Fogel – drums/vocals; Dina Maccabee - viola/vocals and Devin Hoff - stand-up bass) at RAK Studios in the days after their main stage performance at Green Man Festival in Wales.

Listen to ‘So Lillies’, a re-working of the track from her debut album Tragedy (2011)that highlights Julia’s constant progression and the breadth of her capabilities.

Comprised of new arrangements of songs from three of her previous studio releases (Tragedy, Loud City Song and 2015's breakthrough Have You In My Wilderness), Holter's Domino Documents is an essential release for anyone who has witnessed her brilliant, beguiling band on tour around the world in the last five years as well as the perfect introduction to a truly important and innovative young artist.

In the 15 months since Have You In My Wilderness, Julia has gone from strength to strength, including playing the biggest headline show of her career in the UK last month – at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire – and scoring the soundtrack for the new Miles Teller film Bleed For This.

In The Same Room Tracklisting:

Horns Surrounding Me (Live at RAK)

So Lillies (Live at RAK)

Silhouette (Live at RAK)

How Long (Live at RAK)

Feel You (Live at RAK)

Lucette Stranded on the Island (Live at RAK)

In The Green Wild (Live at RAK)

City Appearing (Live at RAK)

Vasquez (Live at RAK)

Betsy on the Roof (Live at RAK)

Sea Calls Me Home (Live at RAK)

In The Same Room is available to pre-order now on limited edition deluxe coloured vinyl with exclusive Polaroid photographs from the RAK session, standard vinyl, CD and digital download.

‘Anyone with a nose for genuine rock & roll already knows that Fat White Family are plainly the most exciting, influential and talked about band to come out of this country in the last few years. We are delighted, if slightly nervous, at the prospect of taking them to the next level.’ – Laurence Bell, Domino

Domino is thrilled to announce that Fat White Family have signed to the label. The band, fresh from a UK tour which culminated with their sold out, headline show at Brixton Academy, are currently working on new material.

Austra, the recording project led by Canadian vocalist and producer Katie Stelmanis, is pleased to announce Future Politics, the third full length in their discography. Future Politics will be out on January 20th 2017.

Accompanying today’s announcement is a video for first single ‘Utopia’. Directed by THAT GO (Chairlift, Lapsley, Father John Misty), the video stars Stelmanis held hostage in an icy, modern apartment by an insidiously sinister device.

Says THAT GO on the video: "Katie came into the video project with a lot of ideas about the future. We discussed everything from food trends to Star Trek: The Next Generation. The video is more near-future than distant-future, with recognizable technology and modern protein sources.”

Future Politics, Austra’s third, and most ambitious album to date, calls for radical hope: “a commitment to replace the approaching dystopia,”says Katie Stelmanis, who leads Austra with the support of Maya Postepski (Princess Century, TR/ST), Dorian Wolf, and Ryan Wonsiak.“Not just hope in the future, but the idea that everyone is required to help write it, and the boundaries of what it can look like are both fascinating andendless. It’s not about ‘being political,’ it’s about reaching beyond boundaries, in every single field.”

Future Politics is a collection of urgent, disciplined anthems for dancefloors and headphones alike, that asks each of us to remember that apocalypse is not an inevitability, but the product of human decision-making.It aims for a world without borders, where human compassion and curiosity drive technological innovation rather than profit, where the necessity of labour is replaced with time for creativity and personal growth, and the terror and destruction wrought by colonialism and white supremacy is recognized as a dark age in human history. The album is radicalism distilled: to galvanic beats, gorgeous, kinetic melodies, and the vulnerable majesty of Stelmanis’s voice.

Inspired by her time living in two cities – Montreal and Mexico City – and propelled by economic and philosophical texts she was reading throughout the album’s creation, Stelmanis was driven to face the world’s ailments with positivity, purpose, and engagement, rather than detachment or despair. Inspiration also came from European club culture - Objekt, Peter Van Hoesen, Lena Willikens as well as the likes of Massive Attack; in all, artists who understand the dancefloor as a source of radical ideas and radical joy.

Change, Rebecca Solnit (author, activist, environmentalist and editor at Harper’s Magazine) writes, comes from “writers, scholars, public intellectuals, social activists, and participants in social media”. Stelmanis adds “artists, club scenes, parties, teenagers, ghettoes” to that list - “every single person’s idea about the future is valid and relevant, especially the freaks and the queers and the outsiders.”

Future Politics tracklisting:

We Were Alive

Future Politics

Utopia

I’m A Monster

I Love You More Than You Love Yourself

Angel In Your Eye

Freepower

Gaia

Beyond A Mortal

Deep Thought

43

Future Politics is available to pre-order now on limited edition deluxe colored vinyl with exclusive signed art print, CD, and digital download.

The Last Shadow Puppets release ‘The Dream Synopsis’ EP on Friday, the 2nd of December 2016. The EP was recorded live in one day at Future-Past Studios, Hudson NY and features new versions of album favourites ‘Aviation’ and ‘The Dream Synopsis’ alongside a selection of cover versions, first heard live during The Last Shadow Puppets’ summer touring. Watch their cover of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Is This What You Wanted’, directed by Focus Creeps below.

13/10/16

As the release ofLodestar - Shirley Collins’ first album in 38 years - draws closer, Shirley is pleased to share a third track, ‘Pretty Polly’, from the forthcoming record.

The song ‘Pretty Polly’ comes from the Ozark Mountains of Arkansas, Shirley says of the song: “I recorded this myself from the singing of Mrs Ollie Gilbert in 1959, on the field trip with Alan Lomax”.

Directed by Layla Atkinson, the video was given one stipulation by Shirley, to incorporate a very special kind of puppet, a jig doll. These puppets come to life when jigged on a vibrating board and have been popular street entertainment for hundreds of years. Inspired by ‘Pretty Polly’ and these jig dolls, Atkinson decided to handcraft all the scenes in the video from cardboard and timber and shot it on 16MM on the hottest September day of the last 100 years.

[VIDEO]

Lodestar – to be released on November 4ththrough Domino Records-is a collection of English, American and Cajun songs dating from the 16th Century to the 1950s, recorded at Shirley’s home in Lewes by Stephen Thrower and Ossian Brown of Cyclobe and produced and musically directed by Ian Kearey.

Additionally, Shirley Collins will be performing at two record shops next month to launch the album – Rough Trade East in London alongside a Q&A with Pete Paphides and Union Music Store, Lewes where she will be joined by Brighton Morris Men.

Born in Hastings in 1935,Shirley was fascinated by folk songs as she was growing up, songs she heard on the radio or sung by her grandparents in Anderson shelters. She left home for London to immerse herself in the burgeoning folk scene; at a party held by Ewan MacColl she met Alan Lomax, and in 1959 she joined him in the USA on the renowned field trip ‘Southern Journey’, recording American folk songs and blues, a formative journey for her personally and professionally.

On her return to England, Shirley cemented her role at the forefront of the Folk Revival, recording over a dozen albums including the influential Folk Roots, New Routes with avant-garde guitarist Davy Graham, and No Roses, from which The Albion Country Band was formed. However, in the 1980s, Shirley lost her singing voice – later diagnosed as a form of dysphonia - and withdrew from performing live. It was only in 2014, after coaxing from David Tibet (Current 93), that Shirley sang in public for the first time since 1982.

Though Shirley Collins (MBE) has been absent from the music scene for many years, her impact has not diminished, the likes of Graham Coxon, Jonny Greenwood, Stewart Leeand Angel Olsen laud her and a documentary The Ballad of Shirley Collins is currently in progress. Additionally, she was given the ‘Good Tradition’ award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2008, elected President of the English Folk Dance & Song Society in the same year and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Music from Sussex University this year. Shirley released her first memoir, America Over the Water, in 2004 and is currently working on her second book.

Now Shirley Collins has sung once more (with a mischievous delight in defeating expectation), the accepted canon of her great recordings will have to be comprehensively recalibrated, yet again.

“Shirley is a time traveller, a conduit for essential human aches, one of the greatest artists who ever lived, and yet utterly humble” Stewart Lee

Last month, King Creosote released Astronaut Meets Appleman, a beautiful addition to his repertoire and an exploration of the tension and harmony between tradition and technology that invoked a feeling, KC says, of “being caught between heaven and earth”.

Otherwise known as Kenny Anderson, KC is now pleased to share the video for ‘Love Life’. The glorious ‘Love Life’ showcases Kenny’s knack for a killer couplet: “Her jealous accusations know no bounds / Scarlett Johansson was never in my house”.

Directed by Euan Robertson, watch the video for ‘Love Life’ below.

Following on from his sold out show in London last month, Anderson will be heading out on a full UK tour in January 2017 and will be joined by his 8-piece band at several of the shows including London’s Barbican.

“I wanted to push myself songwriting-wise, so I went in with hardly anything and had to wing it,” KC reveals. “I wanted to try and flip the clock all the way back to sound like a younger me – or a less cynical me. In the past, I've been fixated on twisting and wrenching every line, but here I've let that go a bit, and I hope that lets you concentrate more on the music; on what’s going on around it.”

“I always feel I’m reaching for something, but I never get there, I wanted to get out of the usual places” KC muses, and this is reflected in the album's geography, which is more far-flung than usual. It was variously recorded at Analogue Catalogue in Ireland's County Down, An Tobar on the Isle of Mull, and Glasgow's Chem19 studios (HQ of long-time ally Paul Savage, who co-produced the LP with KC).

On Astronaut Meets Appleman, King Creosote is still upsetting apple-carts and dealing with the fallout, still appraising love and life, the moon, the stars; tide tables, bagpipe scores, zeros and ones; mathematics, ticking clocks and the beat of our hearts.

Dirty Projectors, the beloved, decade-plus-long recording pursuit of producer, multi-instrumentalist, and vocalist David Longstreth, has today released the first new music since 2012’s Swing Lo Magellan.

Introducing London band Little Cub, whose debut single ‘Loveless’ is streaming now and officially released on 11th November 2016.

Little Cub are Dominic Gore, Duncan Tootill and Ady Acolatse.

Merging a wry, worldly and subversive form of self-effacing, diarist lyricism with sumptuously evocative electronic production, ‘Loveless’ announces the arrival of a band at once deeply in tune with the greatest traditions of progressive, homespun British pop music and at odds with the increasingly vacuous pop culture they are born to.

Little Cub’s burgeoning reputation as one of the city’s finest new exponents of electronic pop has seen them sell out a four-night headline residency at Peckham’s Copeland Estate off the back of the release of their debut ‘Breathing Space’ EP.

‘Loveless’ showcases Little Cub at their direct best, harnessing Tootill’s astute production work – which has seen him work with the likes of George Fitzgerald, Lil Silva and more – to frontman Gore’s refreshingly self-reflexive, honest and occasionally uncomfortable poetics. Watch the video for ‘Loveless’, directed by visual artists Dexter Lander and Nick Pomeroy, now.

With a melody by Acolaste, the lyric of ‘Loveless’, was written by Gore about a relationship Acolatse was in at the time. "Did we really lose our hearts?” the soaring chorus ponders with an odd and infectious kind of triumphant melancholy.

"I was perceiving this relationship between two great people", Gore says, "but could see it was kind of becoming less than the sum of its parts. It was neither party's fault but it was clear that both were becoming colder through the very nature of being together. It's something I've perceived a lot, these situations where if it were merely a friend going through that pain then you'd automatically feel empathy but in a romantic setting those feelings in someone else gradually come to seem ridiculous or embarrassing or even grotesque.

It's about how every time you have a relationship like that it seems to remove a part of you. You can lose your heart a little. Of course this should be horribly sad, and in a way it is, but I also think it might be in a way necessary and so the song's not completely mourning that loss."

‘Loveless’ will be released on 11th November as part of the ‘Loveless’ 12” including 3 reworked versions of the track. Pre-order the EP viaDom Mart.

Loveless 12” Tracklist:

Loveless (Single Version)

Loveless (Beatless Version)

Loveless (Late Night Edit)

Loveless (Dark Edit)

The band’s debut tracks, ‘Breathing Space’ – leading the tracks on its accompanying EP - and ‘Intent’, are available for free download now via their website http://wearelittlecub.com/ and streaming now on Spotify and Apple Music.

22/09/16

Shirley Collins – legendary folk singer and one of England’s most respected song collectors – has announced her return to recording after 38 years. The new album, Lodestar, will be released on November 4th, and with it, Shirley has created the unlikeliest release of the century so far.

Lodestaris a collection of English, American and Cajun songs dating from the 16th Century to the 1950s, recorded at Shirley’s home in Lewes by Stephen Thrower and Ossian Brown of Cyclobe and produced and musically directed by Ian Kearey.

The first track to be shared from Lodestaris ‘Cruel Lincoln’. Shirley explains the history of the song: “This is an ancient ballad, found only rarely in England. The theory is that Cruel Lincoln was a mason who was not paid for the work he did for ‘the Lord of the Manor’ and so extracted a terrible revenge”. It also features bird song recorded at the back of Shirley’s cottage.

Born in Hastings in 1935,Shirley was fascinated by folk songs as she was growing up, songs she heard on the radio or sung by her grandparents in Anderson shelters. She left home for London to immerse herself in the burgeoning folk scene; at a party held by Ewan MacColl she met Alan Lomax, and in 1959 she joined him in the USA on the renowned field trip ‘Southern Journey’, recording American folk songs and blues, a formative journey for her personally and professionally.

On her return to England, Shirley cemented her role at the forefront of the Folk Revival, recording over a dozen albums including the influential Folk Roots, New Routes with avant-garde guitarist Davy Graham, and No Roses, from which The Albion Country Band was formed. However, in the 1980s, Shirley lost her singing voice – later diagnosed as a form of dysphonia - and withdrew from performing live. It was only in 2014, after coaxing from David Tibet (Current 93), that Shirley sang in public for the first time since 1982.

Though Shirley Collins (MBE) has been absent from the music scene for many years, her impact has not diminished, the likes of Graham Coxon, Jonny Greenwood, Stewart Leeand Angel Olsen laud her and a documentary The Ballad of Shirley Collins is currently in progress. Additionally, she was given the ‘Good Tradition’ award at the BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards in 2008, elected President of the English Folk Dance & Song Society in the same year and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Music from Sussex University this year. Shirley released her first memoir, America Over the Water, in 2004 and is currently working on her second book.

Now Shirley Collins has sung once more (with a mischievous delight in defeating expectation), the accepted canon of her great recordings will have to be comprehensively recalibrated, yet again.

“Shirley is a time traveller, a conduit for essential human aches, one of the greatest artists who ever lived, and yet utterly humble” Stewart Lee

Lodestar will be available on limited edition deluxe vinyl with a 24 page 12” booklet featuring song notes by Shirley Collins and sleeve notes by Stewart Lee and a signed print (signed print is available exclusively via Dom Mart), limited edition deluxe CD with 28 page booklet and standard vinyl. For more details visit Dom Mart.

Listen to the album's first two songs, 'Cruel Lincoln' and 'Death and The Lady', below now.

24/08/16

The Magnetic Fields is songwriter, producer and multi-instrumentalist Stephin Merritt. His three-hour magnum opus 69 Love Songs is to be reissued on vinyl on October 7ththrough Domino Records. Comprised of 6 x 10” vinyl, the box set will include a full size 24-page colour booklet with liner notes by Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) including an in-depth interview and a track-by-track with Merritt. The box set will be limited to 1000 copies.

69 Love Songs was released in 1999 and 17 years later, it is still a singular achievement - a bold undertaking by one of pop music’s most innovative and acclaimed songwriters. Originally conceived by Merritt to be a live musical revue of 100 songs, Merritt realised that 100 songs, even at 2 minutes each, would be far too long a show and decided upon the next meaningful number, 69. 69 songs about life, loss, hope and beauty. 69 songs about the pursuit of that ever elusive and patently undefinable holy grail, love.

Stephin Merritt wrote all 69 songs but enlisted the help of numerous friends to record the album including long-time collaborator Claudia Gonson, guitarist John Woo, cellist Sam Davol and Daniel Handler. 24 of the songs feature guest vocals from LD Beghtol, Dudley Klute, Shirley Simms and Gonson.

A career-defining work (as Merritt intended it to be), 69 Love Songs routinely ranks in Best Albums of All Times lists and has earned cult status. It is a celebration to the beauty, magic, humor, frustration, longing and tenderness of the human condition.

Aaron Maine’s Porches follows the release of this year’s acclaimed Pool with the Water EP – a special opportunity to experience the music that formed the melodic skeleton of Pool in its raw state, alongside a pair of previously unreleased songs ‘Black Dress’ and ‘Black Budweiser T-Shirt’. Recorded solo in his adopted home of New York City, the Water EP strips Maine’s work down to its core, opening the curtain on his musical metamorphosis from previous releases Slow Dance In The Cosmos and those of his alias, Ronald Paris, into the Porches of today.

Coinciding with the release of Water, Porches has shared a video for previously unreleased song ‘Black Dress,’ one of the new tracks from the EP. Watch the video HERE.

Maine on Water:

I spent the first year after releasing ‘Slow Dance In The Cosmos’ teaching myself how to record music. I ended up with a bunch of pretty realized demos for songs that ended up on ‘Pool’ during that process. It was a loose and explorative time for me. I wanted to release a select few of these “demos” because I always find the excitement captured by recording a song when you first write it to be almost impossible to recreate later down the line. I chose to rerecord all of the songs that were to be on ‘Pool’ because I felt like by the time I had a batch of songs that I felt would make an album, I had grown as a producer and wanted to give them another pass. Either way, it’s fun to listen back to these earlier versions of the songs and remember how they first existed.

Water is available digitally today, stream it HERE, and will be on sale as a limited edition cassette during Porches upcoming autumn tour dates. It can also be purchased online, in limited quantities, through Bandcamp and the Domino Mart.

Porches commence new live dates with a US headline tour throughout September, supported by Japanese Breakfast and Rivergazer, before arriving in the UK and Europe for a run of dates which include a London headline date at Tufnell Park Dome on Monday 24th October as well as appearances at Pitchfork Paris and London Calling at the end of the month.

Domino are pleased to share news of a summer sampler; named after the first single from Wild Beasts new album, Get My Bang! showcases the sharpest cuts from Domino’s 2016 releases.

Alongside the likes of Blood Orange – at his most personal and political on the recent Freetown Sound, The Kills – still simmering with tension on their fifth record, Baltimore’s finest Animal Collective, the beloved King Creosote and of course, Wild Beasts, there is also a slew of newer artists from the Domino stable to delve into including Kansas-based Taryn Miller aka Your Friend, Sam Coomes (The Quasi man’s first solo album), NYC’s Porches, and the shadowy, psychedelic adventurers Higher Authorities.

Get My Bang! is available free with every order placed at Domino Mart and there’s a 20% discount available across the catalogue (excluding pre-orders until September 1st). Plenty of bang for your buck!

Superimpose, the documentary exploring the voices on The Range’s 2016 album Potential, is out today. You can watch the documentary via the Pitchfork TV YouTube, or via The Scene, the Conde Nast video hub.

Alongside the documentary release, The Range has today released Superimpose (Music From The Documentary) EP. It is available to stream or buy now via all good digital retailers.

The Range is performing today as part of THUMP’s live-streamed DJ set series Sunsets. Tune in via THUMP Facebook Live HERE at 5:30pm ET today to watch The Range debut tracks from the Superimpose EP.

The Range will be appearing on SiriusXMU tomorrow (Friday) night, hosting an hour-long Complete Control show. He’ll be playing songs off the EP, and will have some surprises in store for fans who tune in. The guest host set airs at 7pm ET and again at 11pm ET.

SUPERIMPOSE explores the making of The Range's new album Potential, which exclusively uses the voices of people who posted videos of themselves on YouTube. The documentary sheds light on the unique and varied human stories of the people featured on the album who were completely unknown to The Range (Brooklyn-based electronic producer James Hinton) when originally selected. The documentary travels to off-the-beaten-path neighborhoods of New York City, NY; Kingston, Jamaica and London, England to tell the stories of a wide range of unique people - from Kai, the shy Brooklyn teenager who loves singing Ariana Grande covers; to Damian “Naturaliss” Gordon, the charismatic Jamaican correctional officer by day, dancehall singer by night; to Ophqi, the determined Brixton rapper and dutiful father with a difficult past who is still waiting for his moment to succeed as a musician; and more. Directed by the gifted young filmmaker Daniel Kaufman whose resume includes short films and music videos for DJ Khaled, Waka Flocka Flame, OT Genasis, The Decemberists, and more.

SUPERIMPOSE is soundtracked by music from the Range’s critically acclaimed 2016 album Potential as well as unreleased new material made specifically for the documentary. A seven song EP - Superimpose (Music From the Documentary) EP - featuring new material from the documentary and a reworked version of Potential album standout ‘Superimpose’ is being released digitally to coincide with the documentary release.

01/08/16

On turning 60, legendary producer Clive Langer decided it was time to get a band together.

Previous to that moment, Clive’s CV read like a route map of the last four decades of the very best British music. As a member of legendary rock’n’roll misfits Deaf School, Langer had helped influence a generation of kids who’d go on to form bands as diverse as Madness and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Later on - with studio partner Alan Winstanley – he helped steer everything from One Step Beyond to Kilimanjaro; Too-Rye-Ay to Shipbuilding (a co-write with Elvis Costello) with stop offs for the Attractions, the Commotions, Morrissey, Roddy Frame and even the Dame himself (Bowie’s timeless classic Absolute Beginners). But something about that significant age set him on a different path.

Formed two years ago, The Clang Group are that band. Their first LP is called Practice. It comes out on Domino on Friday the 30th of September.

Recorded at Iguana Studio in Brixton with musician mates and long time cohorts (including Suggs and Roxy Music’s Andy Mackay), Practice is jagged, melodious, ingenious, impulsive and exhilarating. Usually all the same time. Driven by a frantic and restless energy, it’s exactly the kind of record you’d hope someone would make if they woke up aged 60 thinking, “Fuck it, I’m going to start a rock’n’roll band.” Yes, that good.

Practicewill be available on CD (WIGCD372), Vinyl (WIGLP372) and Digitally (WIG372D). Vinyl and digital versions come with a digital bonus EP featuring Rhoda / Places & Things / Breaking Out / Shipbuilding. You can buy the album on iTunes or via Dom Mart – special limited edition signed vinyl with a physical bonus 12” is also available exclusively via Dom Mart. The video for first single ‘Acre Lane’ was directed by Edwin Burdis in a secret location in East London – watch it HERE. You can stream the track HERE.

Boy King will be released on heavyweight 12” vinyl including album download card, with a deluxe edition including a bonus 7” of two bonus songs available via the Wild Beasts online store. The album will also be released on standard and deluxe CD formats, with the deluxe edition including a 12-page booklet, as well as digital download.

Ahead of the release of Sam Coomes’ first ever solo album Bugger Me – due August 19th on Domino Records - he is pleased to share another cut from the record.

Listen to ‘Fordana’ below, a heartfelt song that only Coomes could make with its glitchy and melancholic organ stabs.

Coomes is probably best known as half of the long running underground pop duo Quasi, the other half being Janet Weiss, herself better known as the drummer for Sleater-Kinney. Alongside bandmate Janet Weiss, Quasi have released nine albums over the last two decades and toured all over the world. Concurrently, Sam Coomes has played and recorded with the likes of Built to Spill, Elliott Smith and Jandek, worked as a producer and scored numerous soundtracks for underground films and art installations. In short, he is not a newcomer to the scene.

Bugger Me in Coomes’ own words is “Suicide meets The Beach Boys. Not the sophisticated ‘Pet Sounds’ Beach Boys, but more like ‘Surfer Girl’ stuff. More conscious reference points were Chris Montez or Timmy Thomas.” He wanted to make “entertainment music, but entertainment music meant for those not served by more mainstream entertainment music. Maybe one might want to take a break from Sheer Hellish Miasma & enjoy some simple tunes that maybe speak to the same sense of the absurd, that likewise reject commercialism & market-based aesthetics, & even now & again pay a little homage to the raw synthesizer noise we have grown to love & even crave. Maybe timeworn themes such as love & war still resonate in the dusty backrooms of your mind (indeed maybe they are the only themes which do so).”

Accompanied only by his organ and ‘Conny’ – a mid-‘60s rhythm box (non-programmable, “not even really a drum machine”), Coomes made a conscious choice to pare things back. He explains: “In a time where anyone with a computer & enough time on their hands can micro-manage a given piece of music to the nth degree; can process, arrange, edit & otherwise wheedle a song into a state-of-the-art showcase of outclevering the next guy… maybe allowing a song to exist at its most basic level is a means to not only subvert market-based (or, almost equivalently, technology-based) standards of production, but also a means to keep the music & the performance of the music honest. This is assuming of course that honesty is a good thing, or at least is considered a good thing by those unmoved by mainstream entertainment music, which often reeks of dishonesty. Whether this is a safe assumption, who knows? Actually, I’m suspicious of people proclaiming their own honesty – so forget it. Certainly, its artifice. But the intent is honest artifice – like the original King Kong, as opposed to the remakes. If King Kong for you means Willis O’Brien rather than Dino De Laurentis or Peter Jackson, then you probably have an idea of what I’m driving at.”

18/07/16

Following the release of the first two singles, Wild Beasts have given us even more insight into their forthcoming Boy King, out August 5th on Domino, with album stunner ‘Celestial Creatures’ – listen HERE. Where ‘Get My Bang’ and ‘Big Cat’ showcased a bold new direction, ‘Celestial Creatures’ channels classic Wild Beasts and features Hayden Thorpe’s angelic voice front-and-centre.

This follows the videos for ‘Get My Bang’, which can be viewed HERE, and ‘Big Cat,’ which can be viewed HERE. Last week, the foursome gave fans a glimpse into the making of the ‘Big Cat’ video, watch the behind-the-scenes footage HERE.

The band have also announced two in-store appearances to coincide with the album’s release at London’s Rough Trade East on the day of Boy King’s release, Friday 5th August, as well as Banquet Records on Thursday 25th August.

Where 2014's Present Tense album found Wild Beasts in reflective mood, absorbing a fascination with online culture and electronic music, Boy King has them, as Fleming puts it, "back to being pissed off". The quartet’s ever-present knack for sensual melody via Hayden Thorpe and Fleming's dueting vocals, Ben Little's sinuous guitar groove and Chris Talbot's potent rhythm section carries in Boy King an aggressive, snarling and priapic beast that delves into the darker side of masculinity and Thorpe's own psyche. As Hayden himself says, "After five records there had to be an element of 'what the fuck?'".

The raw pop of Boy King's songs are the perfect foil to Thorpe's libidinous lyricism: "it became apparent that that guitar almost became the character within the songs, that phallic character, the all-conquering male," he says. "I'm letting my inner Byron fully out, I thought I'd tucked him away, but he came screaming back like the Incredible Hulk." Here lies Boy King's greatest success. Between the slide of prowling aggression and interior darkness, there are glorious, gorgeous moments. It’s yet another incomparable Wild Beasts record; a visceral, sensual and jolting body of work that acts as a remarkable soundtrack to the early 21st century male malaise. Or as Thorpe puts it: "I think Boy King is an apocalyptic record. It's about swimming in the abyss. When you think about sex, you've got to think about death, they're one and the same.”

Forthcoming Wild Beasts live dates are as follows with UK dates highlighted bold. All tickets are on sale now via the band’s website HERE.

18/07/16

Canadian punk band White Lung has topped numerous “Best Album So Far” lists this year including Stereogum, Rolling Stone, Consequence of Sound, FACT and NME for Paradise, their fourth and most mature record to date. Now the band – comprised of Mish Barber-Way, Kenneth William and Anne-Marie Vassiliou - have been shortlisted for the Polaris Prize alongside artists including Carly Rae Jepsen, Grimes, and Kaytranada.

Now, White Lung are pleased to unveil the music video for ‘Dead Weight’. Directed by John Stavas, the clip features lead singer Mish Barber-Way head-banging her way through the track in hyper-kinetic fast forward. Much like the song, it’s an all-out assault on the senses and not for the faint of heart.

05/07/16

Following the announcement of new album Boy King, released 5th August 2016 on Domino, alongside its first single ‘Get My Bang’, Wild Beasts have released the video for the album’s second single, ‘Big Cat’. Filmed in several locations outside of Barcelona, Spain and directed by Pablo Maestres, watch the video now HEREas premiered earlier today via The Guardian.

“If ‘Get My Bang’ was a song of the id then ‘Big Cat’ is the super ego,” says lead vocalist Hayden Thorpe of ‘Big Cat’, Boy King’s menacing opening track. “It marked a breakthrough in the writing process for the album, defining the swagger and attitude that would come to shape Boy King. He is all powerful, but at what price?”

Where 2014's Present Tense album found Wild Beasts in reflective mood, absorbing a fascination with online culture and electronic music, Boy King has them, as Fleming puts it, "back to being pissed off". The quartet’s ever-present knack for sensual melody via Hayden Thorpe and Fleming's dueting vocals, Ben Little's sinuous guitar groove and Chris Talbot's potent rhythm section carries in Boy King an aggressive, snarling and priapic beast that delves into the darker side of masculinity and Thorpe's own psyche. As Hayden himself says, "After five records there had to be an element of 'what the fuck?'".

The raw pop of Boy King's songs are the perfect foil to Thorpe's libidinous lyricism: "it became apparent that that guitar almost became the character within the songs, that phallic character, the all-conquering male," he says. "I'm letting my inner Byron fully out, I thought I'd tucked him away, but he came screaming back like the Incredible Hulk." Here lies Boy King's greatest success. Between the slide of prowling aggression and interior darkness, there are glorious, gorgeous moments. It’s yet another incomparable Wild Beasts record; a visceral, sensual and jolting body of work that acts as a remarkable soundtrack to the early 21st century male malaise. Or as Thorpe puts it: "I think Boy King is an apocalyptic record. It's about swimming in the abyss. When you think about sex, you've got to think about death, they're one and the same.”

Boy King will be released on heavyweight 12” vinyl including album download card, with a deluxe edition including a bonus 7” of two bonus songs available via the Wild Beasts online store. The album will also be released on standard and deluxe CD formats, with the deluxe edition including a 12-page booklet, as well as digital download. All deluxe editions include bonus material, Boy King Trash. Pre-order the deluxe 12” of Boy King via Wild Beasts’ online store HEREPre-order the standard 12” of Boy King via Domino Mart HEREPre-order the deluxe CD of Boy King via Domino MartHEREPre-order the standard CD of Boy King via Domino Mart HEREPre-order the digital download of BoyKing via iTunes HERE

Wild Beasts will support the release of Boy King with a run of UK and European live dates in autumn 2016, including two nights at London’s Roundhouse on Tuesday 4th and Wednesday 5th October. The dates follow summer festival appearances including a headline slot at Green Man Festival in August, with those dates preceded by two short residencies in Leeds and Brighton in July.

The band have also announced two in-store appearances to coincide with the album’s release at London’s Rough Trade East on the day of Boy King’s release, Friday 5th August, as well as Banquet Records on Thursday 25th August.

All tickets are on sale now via the band’s website HERE. Pre-order in-store tickets as part of a Boy King album package via Rough Trade HERE and Banquet Records HERE.

Forthcoming live dates are as follows, with UK live dates highlighted bold: -

Porches return with a tropical-feeling avant-garde video for track ‘Car,’ a standout single from the group’s latest album Pool, released in February of this year. Watch it now below.

‘Car’s video was co-produced by Urban Outfitters as the 26th installment of their UO Music Video Series. Check out their blog for behind the scene photos and an interview with video director Daniel Brereton. Over the past 5 years, the UO Music Video Series has helped produce music videos for bands including Empress of, Petite Noir, Ariel Pink, Perfume Genius, and Spoon.

Aaron Maine, Porches’ frontman, recently made his way down to Philadelphia to do a session with Out Of Town Films. Being just Maine and his guitar, the session is personal and intimate. Watch it HERE.

Pool is available to buy now on vinyl, CD, and digital download. A translucent pink cassette version of the record will also be available on the road this fall, with limited online availability right now through the Domino Mart.

To coincide with the new video, new European and UK live dates have been announced for October, including a London headline date on Monday October 24th at Tufnell Park Dome and appearance at Pitchfork Paris Festival, alongside new US tour dates through the autumn.

10/06/16

We're happy to announce that the following Domino classics are back in stock on high quality vinyl and available now through Domino Mart or at your local record store. And if that doesn't make you toss your hat in the air, our special price offers across the entire Pavement catalogue sure as hell will.

Since the tail end of the '90s, Clinic have beamed in other-worldly psychedelic-pop transmissions from their own parallel dimension. Twisting and twining through paths that pass through the seldom visited regions of dub and '60s garage, Clinic keep it arty and groovy in equal measures.

Two classic LPs from the extraordinary Four Tet , now back in print. The 32 minute Ringer, a four-track excursion into the kind of wide-open spaces you might find if you set out to make techno with an afrobeat / krautrock sensibility. There Is Love In You- regarded as his best record in some quarters, this is a dance-inspired masterpiece.

Pavement were the first in their class, the band that spawned a myriad of imitators and released several classic albums, Slanted & Enchanted, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, Wowee Zowee, Brighten The Corners and Terror Twilight. Actually, we'll correct that, they didn't make several classic albums, they made five classic albums. Go fill in the gaps in your Pavement collection: hurry, they're going, going...

Last week saw The Kills (Jamie Hince and Alison Mosshart) release their eagerly anticipated fifth full-length album, Ash & Ice. The band, in speaking to Entertainment Weekly in the lead up to the albums’ release, had this to say about the record they made:

HINCE: I hope (people) can see that electric guitar music is the future! That it’s not stuck in the past, or nostalgic. I hope it makes them want to dress up and start a guitar band. And join our gang.

Mosshart: The aim was to be open and we pushed ourselves to write in a way that could be understood and mean something to other people. Human topics and feelings - love, joy, pain, loss, confusion, and those moments of feeling wildly, wildly happy and inspired beyond any sense of reason. The classic stuff! It’s an honest record.

The Kills recently performed a cover of Rihanna’s ‘Desperado’ during a Sirius XMU session. The entire session premieres tonight on SIRIUS XMU at 9pm Eastern, and will replay on Thursday, June 9th at 3am and 4pm ET, Friday June 10th at 9am ET and again on Sunday at 12pm ET.

The Kills just completed a coast-to-coast tour of North America, finishing up on Monday in California, where the band performed a rousing version of the album’s second single ‘Heart Of A Dog’ on Conan - Watch Here.The album’s lead single ‘Doing It To Death’ took the band to the stage of The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon last month.

Blood Orange - aka Devonte Hynes - will release his highly anticipated new album, Freetown Sound, on 1st July, 2016 on Domino. Written and produced by Hynes, Freetown Sound is a tour de force, a confluence of Hynes’ past, present, and future that melds his influences with his own established musical voice. A sneak peek into the album’s world (including brief glimpses of new songs and maybe even an album guest or two) can be seen HERE.

Press here to pre-order Freetown Sound via iTunes orhere to pre-order the deluxe edition LP available exclusively through Dom Mart. The deluxe contains the album on double LP housed in a wide spine jacket, and a bonus 10” with two additional non-album tracks “Do You See My Skin Through The Flames” and “Sandra’s Smile,” as well as a double sided 24x36 poster. The CD and LP are available 19th August.

In Hynes’ own words:

“I have just finished making an album about my life, my upbringing, being black in England, being black in America…my movement to this country at the age of 21, the same age that my mother moved from Guyana to London, and my father from Sierra Leone to London. Freetown Sound, the name of my album, is taken from Freetown where my father was born.”

For well over a decade, Devonté Hynes has proven himself a virtuoso of versatility, experimenting with almost every conceivable musical genre under a variety of monikers. After moving to New York City in the mid-2000s, Hynes became Blood Orange, pluming the oeuvres of the city’s musical legends to create a singular style of urgent, delicate pop music. Freetown Sound, which follows 2011’s Coastal Grooves and 2013’s breakthrough Cupid Deluxe, builds upon everything Hynes has done as an artist, resulting in the most expansive artistic statement of his career. Drawing from a deep well of techniques and references, the album unspools like a piece of theatre, evoking unexpected communions of moods, voices, and eras. Freetown Sound derives its name from the birthplace of Hynes’ father, the capital of Sierra Leone. Thematically, it is profoundly personal and unapologetically political, touching on issues of race, religion, sex, and sexism over 17 shimmering songs.

Hynes’s solo project lives in tandem with his in-demand role as a songwriter/producer for hire, working with the likes of Carly Rae Jepsen, Solange Knowles, FKA Twigs, and Sky Ferreira. He is also an established composer, scoring films (Gia Coppola’s Palo Alto, 2014) and artworks (Alex Da Corte’s Easternsports, 2016) alike. In 2015, his evermore-multifaceted career was crystallized on stage, where he invited his collaborators to take part in two sold-out performances at the Apollo Theater, with all proceeds benefitting Opus 118 Harlem School of Music.

Blood Orange is playing the following shows this summer in support of Freetown Sound. More shows will be announced soon.

Sam Coomes will release his first ever solo album Bugger Me on August 19th. Coomes is probably best known as half of the long running underground pop duo Quasi, the other half being Janet Weiss, herself better known as the drummer for Sleater-Kinney.

Coomes is pleased to share the first track from the forthcoming record, ‘Stride On’, all murky drum machines and gnarly organ stabs. Listen to 'Stride On' now below.

Alongside bandmate Janet Weiss, Quasi have released nine albums over the last two decades and toured all over the world. Concurrently, Sam Coomes has played and recorded with the likes of Built to Spill, Elliott Smith and Jandek, worked as a producer and scored numerous soundtracks for underground films and art installations. In short, he is not a newcomer to the scene.

Bugger Me in Coome’s own words is “Suicide meets The Beach Boys. Not the sophisticated ‘Pet Sounds’ Beach Boys, but more like ‘Surfer Girl’ stuff. More conscious reference points were Chris Montez or Timmy Thomas.” He wanted to make “entertainment music, but entertainment music meant for those not served by more mainstream entertainment music. Maybe one might want to take a break from Sheer Hellish Miasma & enjoy some simple tunes that maybe speak to the same sense of the absurd, that likewise reject commercialism & market-based aesthetics, & even now & again pay a little homage to the raw synthesizer noise we have grown to love & even crave. Maybe timeworn themes such as love & war still resonate in the dusty backrooms of your mind (indeed maybe they are the only themes which do so).”

Accompanied only by his organ and ‘Conny’ – a mid-‘60s rhythm box (non-programmable, “not even really a drum machine”), Coomes made a conscious choice to pare things back. He explains: “In a time where anyone with a computer & enough time on their hands can micro-manage a given piece of music to the nth degree; can process, arrange, edit & otherwise wheedle a song into a state-of-the-art showcase of outclevering the next guy… maybe allowing a song to exist at its most basic level is a means to not only subvert market-based (or, almost equivalently, technology-based) standards of production, but also a means to keep the music & the performance of the music honest. This is assuming of course that honesty is a good thing, or at least is considered a good thing by those unmoved by mainstream entertainment music, which often reeks of dishonesty. Whether this is a safe assumption, who knows? Actually, I’m suspicious of people proclaiming their own honesty – so forget it. Certainly, its artifice. But the intent is honest artifice – like the original King Kong, as opposed to the remakes. If King Kong for you means Willis O’Brien rather than Dino De Laurentis or Peter Jackson, then you probably have an idea of what I’m driving at.”

Bugger Me is available to pre-order now on vinyl, deluxe vinyl, CD and digital download. The vinyl, deluxe vinyl and CD all come with a black and white 16-page booklet and the deluxe LP is coloured black and white.

With less than two weeks until the release of their sixth full-length album, Ash & Ice, The Kills (Jamie Hince and Alison Mosshart) are pleased to share the video for ‘Siberian Nights’, the third song from the record to be heard ahead of the June 3 release. ‘Siberian Nights’ was written by Hince, during a solo journey on the infamous Trans-Siberian Express. Directed by Giovanni Ribisi, the video reflects Hince’s “icy, paranoid” vision for the song.

Says Ribisi:

"I've always looked at videos from a cultural perspective. Whether it's about a single, cultural event or some facet of the band. Over the course of making this video, what was there evolved into being something more abstract. However, during its early conception, I was enamored with a John Houston film called The Misfits. Ernst Haas was there during the making of it, taking photographs. His pictures were some of the many references for the video.The Kills have always been one of my favorite bands. Their music is undeniable. It was a pleasure and a privilege for me to work on this."

The Kills continue to tour the globe, previewing songs off the forthcoming release. All upcoming dates below, and tickets are on sale now.

Wild Beasts have announced their new album Boy King. Their most direct and vital collection to date, the album is set for release on 5th August 2016 with its first single ‘Get My Bang’also released today. The video for ‘Get My Bang’ was shot in Belgrade and directed by Olivier Groulx (Arcade Fire, alt-J, Scott Walker) featuring vocalist Hayden Thorpe’s twisted routine of Justin Timberlake-meets-Trent Reznor choreography.

Where 2014's Present Tense album found Wild Beasts in reflective mood, absorbing a fascination with online culture and electronic music, Boy King has them, as Tom Fleming puts it, "back to being pissed off". The quartet’s ever-present knack for sensual melody via Hayden Thorpe and Fleming's dueting vocals, Ben Little's sinuous guitar groove and Chris Talbot's potent rhythm section carries in Boy King an aggressive, snarling and priapic beast that delves into the darker side of masculinity and Thorpe's own psyche. As Hayden himself says, "After five records there had to be an element of 'what the fuck?'".

A newfound creative friction between Thorpe and Fleming proved key to unleashing the unique pop sensibility of Boy King - Fleming’s more visceral experimentation unlocking new dimensions in Thorpe’s own writing. After spending a whole year finessing this new found impetus in East London, the band emerged with a collection of songs ready to take to Dallas and producer John Congleton (St. Vincent, Swans, The War on Drugs). Both Thorpe and Fleming credit that trip to Dallas with teasing out the raw power of Boy King. In the studio, the band kept up the intensity of the office hour routine they'd employed during writing sessions and, they say, responded well to Congleton's sober discipline. "He made us get in there, get on and do it," Fleming says. "English politeness never featured."

The raw pop of Boy King's songs are the perfect foil to Thorpe's libidinous lyricism: "it became apparent that that guitar almost became the character within the songs, that phallic character, the all-conquering male," he says. "I'm letting my inner Byron fully out, I thought I'd tucked him away, but he came screaming back like the Incredible Hulk." Here lies Boy King's greatest success. Between the slide of prowling aggression and interior darkness, there are glorious, gorgeous moments. It’s yet another incomparable Wild Beasts record; a visceral, sensual and jolting body of work that acts as a remarkable soundtrack to the early 21st century male malaise. Or as Thorpe puts it: "I think Boy King is an apocalyptic record. It's about swimming in the abyss. When you think about sex, you've got to think about death, they're one and the same.

Boy King will be released on heavyweight 12” vinyl including album download card, with a deluxe edition including a bonus 7” of two bonus songs available via the Wild Beasts online store. The album will also be released on standard and deluxe CD formats, with the deluxe edition including a 12-page booklet, as well as deluxe digital download. All deluxe editions include bonus material, Boy King Trash.

Wild Beasts will support the release of Boy King with a run of UK and European live dates in autumn 2016, including London’s Roundhouse on Tuesday 4th October. The dates follow summer festival appearances including a headline slot at Green Man Festival in August, with those dates preceded by two short residencies in Leeds and Brighton in July. Venue pre-sale tickets for October’s Oxford and London headline shows are available today and on general sale from Thursday and Friday at 9am respectively. All other regional headline dates are on general sale now. Ticket info can be found via the band’s website HERE.

Forthcoming live dates are as follows, with UK live dates highlighted bold: -

The Last Shadow Puppets have shared the video for new single ‘Miracle Aligner’ – watch it now HERE. Taken from the number one album Everything You’ve Come To Expect, the new video was filmed in London and is the final video of the triptych from director Saam Farahmand, which included the videos for ‘Everything You’ve Come To Expect’ (watch HERE) and ‘Aviation’ (watch HERE).

‘Miracle Aligner’, plus singles ‘Aviation’ and ‘Bad Habits’, feature on the band’s second album Everything You’ve Come To Expect which was released 1st April 2016. The new album finds Alex Turner and Miles Kane reunited with James Ford (production and drums) and Owen Pallett (string arrangements) and joined by Zachary Dawes (Mini Mansions) on bass, recording the follow up to 2008’s ‘The Age Of The Understatement’ at Shangri La Studio in Malibu.

Yorkston/Thorne/Khan recently released the beautiful Broken Wave Live EP. The songs were taken from the Broken Wave Live sessions recorded at The Square Studio in East London. These sessions afforded the band an opportunity to showcase brawsome live versions of three songs from the band’s acclaimed debut album Everything Sacred – released earlier this year.

YTK are now pleased to share the video for ‘Song for Thirza’, the band’s reading of legendary songwriter and singer Lal Waterson’s original.

Elsewhere on the EP, ‘Broken Wave (A Blues for Doogie)’ is James Yorkston’s tribute to Doogie Paul – a powerful, tender lament to his old bass player and friend whilst Jon Thorne takes the lead on his yearning composition and album title track ‘Everything Sacred’.

Yorkston/Thorne/Khan are an experimental group that includes James Yorkston, one of the most “influential singer/songwriters on the Scottish folk scene”, Suhail Yusuf Khan, award winning sarangi player and classical singer from New Delhi and Jon Thorne, best known as jazz double bass player with electro outfit Lamb.

27/04/16

With just a week to go before the release of their forthcoming album, Paradise,out on Domino on May 6th, White Lung has unveiled the video for single ‘Below.’"This is my Stevie-Nicks-meets-Celine Dion ballad," said lead singer Mish Barber-Way."I needed to try to do a ballad about glamorous women. It's based on a quote by Camille Paglia, 'Beauty fades. Beauty is transient. That is why we value it,' she said. 'Feminism's failure to acknowledge that beauty is a value in itself, that even if a woman manages to achieve it for a particular moment, she has contributed something to the culture.' It's a song about the preservation of glamour and beauty."

Directed by Richard Bates Jr., the video stars AnnaLynne McCord along with other Marilyn Monroe look-alikes.

Richard Bates Jr. is known for his films Suburban Gothic and Excision.Bates said of the video, "White Lung play for an audience of impersonators who come to the realization that they've betrayed themselves in the pursuit of fame. ‘Below’ is a love-letter to influential female artists from the past. Our video serves to reinforce the notion that what makes an artist special cannot be manufactured." Both AnnaLynne McCord and Mish Barber-Way appear in Bates' most recent film Trash Fire.

White Lung have shared two tracks so far from their forthcoming album. The first, ‘Hungry,’"is a tightly-wound, catchy-as-fuck invective played at a polished, breakneck velocity," said Pitchfork, who proclaimed it 'Best New Track.' And ‘Kiss Me When I Bleed,’ which also received the BNT distinction. Now with ‘Below’ the trio has given fans yet another taste of their deepest and most mature effort to date. They will tour extensively throughout Europe and North America this summer. Full list of dates below.

For the making of Paradise, vocalist Mish Barber-Way, guitarist Kenneth William and drummer Anne-Marie Vassiliou reconnected in Los Angeles to work with producer Lars Stalfors (HEALTH, Cold War Kids, Alice Glass). White Lung spent a month in the studio, working closely with Stalfors to challenge what could be done with their songs. Bringing all the energy, unique guitar work and lyrical prowess the band are known for to the studio, White Lung curated their songs with a new pop sensibility, focusing in on making a record for the present - "I wanted a record that sounded like it was made in 2016", said William. Mixed by Stalfors and later mastered by Joe LaPorta, Paradise is their smartest, brightest songwriting yet.

Mish Barber-Way and Kenneth William sat down with Annie Clark aka St. Vincent to discuss the making of the album and their creative process. The entire conversation can be read here.

Paradise is available to pre-order now on limited edition deluxe colored vinyl, limited edition tri-glitter cassette, CD, and digital download.

We are delighted to announce that Villagers’ Darling Arithmetic has been nominated in the category ‘Album Award’, at this year’s Ivor Novello Awards.

Conor O’Brien previously won the ‘Best Song Musically and Lyrically’ Ivor Novello Award in 2011, for his track ‘Becoming A Jackal’ taken from the debut album of the same name.

Released in April 2015, Darling Arithmetic is the third full length album from Villagers. O’Brien wrote, recorded, produced and mixed the album at his home – the loft of a converted farmhouse that he shares in the coastal town of Malahide, north of Dublin. It was a more pared-back, intimate journey compared to the multi-faceted arrangements of 2010’s Becoming A Jackal and 2013’s {Awayland} and revealed a single-minded artist at the peak of his already considerable songwriting powers.

Previously nominated twice for the Mercury Music Prize and winner of Ireland’s Choice Music Prize, O’Brien is currently working on his fourth album.

Villagers will be playing a string of festivals this summer across Europe and North America.

The Kills haveunveiled the second music video from their highly anticipated fifth album, Ash & Ice.“Heart Of A Dog” premiered on the Coachella festival live stream immediately before the band’s blistering energetic performance on Friday evening. The video was directed by Sophie Muller who has worked with the band in the past (“U.R.A Fever,” “Cheap and Cheerful,” “Last Days of Magic” and “Satellite”). Ash & Ice will be released on June 3rd through Domino.

The band adds: We are very very especially pleased to release our new music video for “Heart of A Dog!” It was shot all day and into the night in Los Angeles by our dear friend, the tremendous talent, Sophie Muller. We love this video. We love it because it’s fucking fun. Muscle cars and backflips. Palms trees and cacti. Dogs and dice. Neon and sunshine. We hope you love it as much as we do. VROOM VROOM. Love, The Kills.

Over their almost decade-and-a-half career, The Kills have released four records. Each one a restless, reckless enigmatic art statement that bristled with tension, anxiety, sex, unstudied cool and winking ennui, yet not one of them sounded like the previous one. Ash & Ice is the follow up to 2011’s critically lauded Blood Pressures and was five years in the making.

The Kills’ forthcoming European run in May is now sold out. The band will be returning in the autumn, for shows including London’s Roundhouse on the 7th of October - general on-sale for the new dates is on Friday at 10am CET. All dates are listed below.

The Kills Tour Dates

April 18 Los Angeles, CA - Mayan Theatre (SOLD OUT)

April 19 Santa Ana, CA - The Observatory

April 22 Indio, CA - Coachella (SOLD OUT)

May 1 Amsterdam, NL - Melkweg (SOLD OUT)

May 3 Paris, FR - La Cigale (SOLD OUT)

May 4 London, UK - Village Underground (SOLD OUT)

May 13 Atlanta, GA - Shaky Knees Festival

May 14 Washington, DC - 9:30 Club

May 15 Boston, MA - Paradise Rock Club

May 19 Boston, MA - Paradise Rock Club (SOLD OUT)

May 21 Toronto, ON - Danforth Music Hall

May 22 Detroit, MI - St Andrew’s Hall

May 23 Chicago, IL - Riviera Theatre

May 25 Minneapolis, MN - First Avenue

May 26 Kansas City, KS - Midland Theatre

May 27 Denver, CO - Ogden Theatre

May 28 Salt Lake City, UT - The Depot

May 31 Vancouver, BC - Commodore Ballroom

June 1 Seattle, WA - Showbox SoDo

June 2 Portland, OR - Roseland Theater

June 4 San Francisco, CA - Fox Theater

June 9 - 12 Newport, UK - Isle of Wight Festival

June 14 Clermont-Ferrand, France – La Cooperative De Mai

June 16 Madrid, Spain - Mad Cool Festival

June 29 Euch-Sur-Alzette, Luxembourg – The Rockhal

July 1 Marmande, France – Garorock Festival

July 2 Normandy, France – Festival Beauregard

July 3 Belfort, France - EUROKEENES

July 6 Kiev, Ukraine - U-Park Festival

July 9 Moscow, Russia - Park Live Festival

July 14 Carhaix, France - Festival Les Vieilles Charrues

July 15 Benicassim, Spain - Benicassim

July 22 Byron Bay NSW, Australia - Splendour In The Grass

August 6 Katowice, Poland - Off Festival

August 7 Prague, Czech Republic – Roxy

August 8 Leipzig, Germany – Taubchenthal

August 9 Copenhagen, Denmark – Vega

August 11 Oslo, Norway – Oya Festival

August 12 Stockholm, Sweden – Way Out West Festival

August 13 Helsinki, Finland – Flow Festival

August 18 Hasselt, Belgium – Pukkelpop

August 20 St. Polen, Austria – Frequency Festival

September 29 Manchester, UK - Albert Hall*

September 30 Glasgow, UK - O2 ABC*

October 1 Leeds, UK - Beckett Students’ Union*

October 2 Nottingham, UK - Rock City*

October 4 Oxford, UK - O2 Academy 1*

October 5 Bristol, UK - Anson Rooms*

October 6 Birmingham, UK - O2 Institute 1*

October 7 London, UK - Roundhouse*

October 18 Paris, France - Olympia*

October 22 Berlin, Germany - Tempodrom*

October 23 Hamburg, Germany - Große Freiheit 36*

October 25 Cologne, Germany - E-Werk*

October 26 Munich, Germany - Tonhalle*

October 27 Zurich, Switzerland - Volkhaus*

October 29 Milan, Italy - Fabrique*

October 31 Lyon, France - Le Radient*

November 3 Lisbon, Portugal - Lisbon Coliseum*

November 8 Nantes, France - Le Stéréolux*

November 9 Brussels, Belgium - Arenbergschouwburg*

*on sale April 22nd at 10am local time

Ash & Ice is available to pre-order now on 2xLP, CD, and digital download. Pre-order digitally and receive “Doing It To Death” and “Heart Of A Dog” instantly. Pre-order: The Kills / iTunes